Mpox deadlier strain in UK, US, & Canada. Info on getting vaccinated. Non-sexual transmission. Evolving. Biden Bungling.
You can get vaccinated at CVS in the Dallas area. What you need to know.
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Link to earlier reports on mpox by the Dallas Gay Liberation newsletter at the end of this post. It is painless.
UPDATE: 5th case in the UK. Not related to the earlier cluster of 4 cases.
This is becoming a regular thing.
BBC, Nov. 29, 2024, “Fifth person with mpox confirmed in England.”
Again, they are racing to trace contacts and we hope they are faster in contract tracing than mpox spreading.
Health officials say close contacts of the Leeds case are being traced but the risk to the UK population is low.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3wqg05v60wo
Mpox 1b deadlier strain showing up in the UK, USA and Canada.
As Mpox spreads over Africa there are more places from which it can spread to the West or other places in the world outside sub-Sahara Africa.
There is now about roughly one case a week, where someone is not stopped at the airport, the person reaches home and then gets sick and sees a doctor.
So far the case is reported to local health authorities and then it is a race to track down contacts before it gets out of control.
The question is what happens when a case occurs in some county where the public health is run by incompetents. It isn’t recognized as mpox, or the contact tracing is started late, or is slow, or is understaffed, or is incompetent and then it becomes quite a few cases and the state and federal authorities have to step in, and we have to hope it is stopped in time.
These are the recent cases.
Canada
National Post, Nov. 23, 2024, “First Canadian case of more severe mpox strain confirmed in Manitoba.”
The person wasn’t stopped at the airport, and sought care after he returned They are doing contact tracing. Hopefully the contact tracing is faster than the start of new cases.
California
CNN, Nov. 16, 2024, “United States’ first known case of more severe strain of mpox confirmed in California.”
The person diagnosed with clade I mpox had recently traveled from Eastern Africa, where an mpox outbreak is ongoing. The person was treated at a local medical facility and released, the CDC said. The person has been isolating at home and their symptoms are improving. The state and CDC are working to identify and follow up with potential contacts. [Boldface added.]
https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/16/health/mpox-clade1-california-first/index.html
So far no new cases, so it appears to be contained.
London
British Medical Journal, Oct. 31, 2024, “UK confirms first case of clade 1b mpox.”
https://www.bmj.com/content/387/bmj.q2406
In this case it spread to three other people that lived with the first case, so they had a total of four cases. It seems it has been contained though with no new cases reported.
Assoc. Press, Nov. 6, 2024, “UK identifies 4 cases of new mpox variant, the first cluster outside Africa.”
https://apnews.com/article/mpox-variant-clade-uk-africa-vaccine-cf54bba3e8731a30feac34f4006e9a15
The recent Canadian case.
Mpox is evolving, there are multiple strains, and it isn’t always sexually transmitted.
The clade 1a is spread mostly among children.
The clade 1b appears to be sexually transmitted. It is much more deadly.
Clade 2, the strain which caused the 2022 pandemic among men who have sex with men, is still on the lose.
Science, Aug. 24, 2024, “Confused about the mpox outbreaks? Here’s what’s spreading, where, and why.”
Three concurrent mpox pandemics happening.
Evolving to spread more easily from human to human.
It may well be much deadlier or not. I get conflicting reports about how deadly the news strain is as to how much deadlier it is, but it is likely it is a lot more deadly. The death toll in Africa is steadily climbing.
Wired, Aug. 15, 2024, had this report, “This Mpox Outbreak Isn’t Like the Last One.”
Statistics show that more than 15,000 mpox cases and 461 deaths have been reported on the African continent since January, spreading out of countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where mpox has long been endemic, to 13 other African nations: countries like Rwanda, Kenya, Burundi, and Uganda, where the disease has never previously made an impact.
For Nachega, these patterns of behavior indicate a particularly concerning aspect of how mpox has adapted in recent years. Mpox outbreaks were traditionally mediated through wild animal bites, consuming infected meat, or so-called spillover events where rural populations living in close proximity to infected animals would contract the disease. However, it now appears that the virus has evolved into an illness which is not only sexually transmitted but can be easily passed on to family members or anyone who comes in contact with an infected person’s body fluids, allowing it to spread far more widely. [Bold face added.]
What the articles are indicating, and the spread of the 1b strain to roommates in the UK, that when and if mpox does get on the loose in the United States, Canada, or the UK, it won’t be spread only by sexual contact. Straight people will realize that they might get mpox.
When straight people seeing their neighbors or children in the news with mpox, they will be in a total hysterical screaming panic.
There will be a rush to get vaccinated. There isn’t enough vaccine to go around if everyone wants it. You might find it very difficult to get vaccinated.
You have to take the two shots 28 days apart. That is 4 weeks. A lot can happen in 4 weeks. The next case could be in some rural area lacking a medical infrastructure, and time it becomes known what is happening the state and federal government is doing massive tracking and straight people and their children are in the news and in the hospital.
So get vaccinated now.
This is my global newsletter which has been reporting on mpox for quite some time.
Click on image.
What to know to get vaccinated in the North Texas area.
Both Walgreens and CVS carry the mpox vaccine.
There is no pain at all.
HOWEVER, Walgreen’s reservation system will let you get a reservation for the mpox vaccine at a Walgreens location that doesn’t carry the mpox. When I showed up for my appointment the staff told me that they have reported the problem to “corporate.”
The CVS will tell you exactly which locations have it and their system will only allow reservations for mpox vaccine that actually have mpox vaccine. That is where I got vaccinated today, 11/27/2024.
You don’t want to spend an afternoon calling around trying to find out which Walgreen’s has it, and I am concerned that in general, even if they say they have the vaccine you will find that for some reason you show up and they don’t have it.
Don’t fool around, go to CVS. All the CVS locations with mpox are north of the Trinity river in Dallas. It seems the African American leadership doesn’t care because maybe homophobia?
CVS also allows walk ins for vaccinations, but I don’t know about mpox. The CVS that I went through had more than one dose on hand, so I think you might be able to just walk in. But do a reservation to be sure. Walgreens won’t allow walk-ins for vaccinations.
Cost - Biden Bungling.
I paid $320 for my vaccination because I am on Medicare. If you are on Medicare, for all the other vaccinations I have gotten for Covid, Flu, Pneumonia, and RSV, I didn’t need anything. However, for Medicare I need a prescription from the doctor and that is the first requirement. I don’t know if there is Medicare coverage.
Scheduling a doctors appointment, and paying for a doctors appointment is another barrier to getting mpox. Likely if you are showing up for mpox, you god damn know that you need it. The Biden administration is a bungling bunch of idiots. Why the so-called LGBTQXYZ leadership thought this was acceptable is not known.
Married men who have sex with men might not want to discuss with their doctor the need for an mpox vacciantion. Or if they are DL they might not want to discuss it with their doctor. So we have a potential risk to the Gay community because the Biden administration is a bunch of idiots.
For people under 65, consult your insurance plans the pharmacist told me today.
The mpox pandemic of 2022 was avoidable, the current situation was avoidable.
You won’t hear about this in the LGBTQXYZ press, but the scientific community has been unanimous in the opinion that the 2022 pandemic was avoidable as well as the current situation.
Scientists predicted that mpox would be neglected and the Biden Administration did neglect mpox.
[1] In May 12, 2023, Nature magazine had this article, “The disease will be neglected: scientists react to WHO ending mpox emergency.” This is the fear that after the Clade 2 mpox epidemic in the Western world ending, it would be neglected.
And it was neglected, hence the current emergency in 2024.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01581-1
[2] In Nov. 30, 2022, Nature magazine had an article about how there had been warnings about mpox becoming a sexually transmitted disease, but the scientists were ignored.
Unfortunately, this article in Nature, Nov. 30, 2022, “These monkeypox researchers warned that the disease would go global,” is now behind a paywall.
They had warned that there was a developing risk as they observed that mpox was becoming an STD. The epidemic in 2022 could have been prevented.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04155-9
[3] This is Science magazines article on the history of bungling and slow response to Clade 2 in Nigeria.
Obviously after the 2022 epidemic, we needed to have a program of vaccinations in Africa, but it never happened.
Associated Press story, “Africa’s mpox outbreaks result from neglect and world’s inability to stop epdemics, experts say.”
https://apnews.com/article/africa-mpox-outbreak-who-f1c5d501223ccf3b53c6d9a2727d5c8a
Politico, 10/10/2024, “Mpox is killing again. It didn’t have to be this way.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/10/mpox-variant-outbreak-africa-us-00183212
Bloomberg reports on it.
I wrote a letter to U.S. House Rep. Jasmine Crockett, Jan. 31, 2023. NO RESPONSE.
What I asked for then in Jan. 2023, is what they are now doing in late 2024. But Jasmine Crockett couldn’t be bothered to respond to the letter.
The local Stonewall Democrats didn’t bother to raise issues also nor the Dallas Voice.
In general it has been none-news in the LGBTQXYZ media.
Summary
The story of the mpox epidemic in Africa is about not enough vaccines, waiting for vaccines, trying to get vaccines out to people and the pandemic spreading as the programs to stop the pandemic fail.
The likelihood of cases where the person reaches home, gets sick, and then a race to do contact tracing is done, is going to go up as there are more places in Africa, with more infection, where a returning passenger might bring mpox here.
We are now depending, week by week, on the health authorities, whereever the next case might occur, doing their job effectively.
If we have another pandemic, remember Jasmine Crockett, remember the LGBTQ+ Democrats who were concerned with anything and everything except mpox, remember the bungling Biden administration.
